The Heretic (General)

3

Three days before, the great wheels were brought forth from the Hestinga temple complex on carts, along with barrels of rendered dak grease to lubricate the screws of the levee gates, which had only been used four times a year since time immemorial. Occasionally, over the centuries, a new gate had needed to be constructed, and consecrated metal, reduced nishterlaub from the vast storehouses in Lindron, was brought in to construct one. The handwheels required two strong men to turn them and four to lift them up and place them on the tang of the screw axle. The handwheels were only brought out during flood days and then, when irrigation was complete several days later, to close the headgates and turn the water off.

Abel had sent a Scout contingent to guard the priests as they deployed the wheels along the levee, and then Joab had sent along squads of Regulars on special assignment to stay with the duo of priests, each wearing the pith helmets they borrowed from the Engineer’s Guild for such ceremonies, who manned each headgate handwheel. That they, the priests, must be the ones who did the turning was understood and accepted by all.

It was ever thus in the Land.

The irrigation ditches themselves had required some reworking. The Militia had gathered to fight and wanted no part of moving the earth—something they could very well do on their own time—and Joab had sent his Regular engineer company to oversee and, in the end, perform additional dredging of the extant ditches and the cutting of new ones.

Observe the preparative steps:

There were, of course, the work squads sweating under the heat of the sun. They used wooden shovels to carve into the sunbaked ground. But the basin was also full of workdaks hitched to all varieties of digging and earthmoving tools the engineers had available. Buck scrappers and fresnos pulled by the daks worried the fill out of ditches until they were pristine and as ready to take water as they ever were during normal floodings.

The only difference: the ground was going to be planted for a different kind of harvest, if Abel had anything to do with it.

Now the irrigation scatter ditches were reamed, and every elb had been worked over by the engineers to produce maximum flow spread once the gates were open. It had been a massive task to accomplish in a day and a half, and yet they had done it, driving the teams of daks until many of them broke, dropped, and must be left where they lay for there was no time for butchery or burial. Now the insectoids were at the carcasses that dotted the basin and each one appeared to be surrounded by a translucent, flickering cloud as the flitternits danced, ate, bred, and then deposited their maggots into the humps of flesh.

A signal flew down the levee by wigwag.

Open the gates.

Signalmen read it and called it out while their partners flashed it down the levee to the next group waiting by a handwheel.

Open the gates.

And the priests chanted their blessing and began to move. The great screws turned. Slowly, ever so slowly, the headgate doors were raised up by the screws’ rotation.

The water poured forth upon the land. First a trickle, then a stream, and then a flood.

Open the gates all the way!

There was a limit, of course, which was the water level of the Canal itself. When it dropped beneath the lowest portion of the gate, no more water could flow. But that limit took long minutes to reach. Meanwhile the basin—a quarter league across and at least three leagues east and west—filled with a thin layer of water. It was at no time more than a hand’s depth. Furthermore, the thirsty ground soaked up at least half of that.

But there came a point when the ground could absorb no more. The water pooled. Where there was bare earth, it became mud slurry. Where there was ground cover, it sheened the ground with great patches of wetness.

And then the priests stopped. They closed the gates, turning in the opposite direction, speaking their prayers and blessings backward, as long tradition and special practice demanded.

The Blaskoye charged down the basin, chasing fleeing men, wreaking destruction with bow and then with reloaded musketry. Shooting men in the back. Riding them down. Putting arrows through throats, arms, legs. Cutting men down with knives, swords, spiked clubs, the butts of rifles.

And yet more remained. More sprinted ahead, huffing up the terraces of the fields, seeking the levee.

These Farmers stood no chance, thought the riders. What was there on the other side but the Canal? Those that fled would be ruthlessly pursued. Slaughtered without mercy. It was amusing! It was exhilarating!

A cry went up among the Blaskoye that Abel and many of the Scouts understood but, perhaps fortunately, few of the Regulars or Militia could.

“Kill the Farmers!”

And then the vanguard of the Blaskoye’s charging donts, riding donts unequalled in speed and power among all the dontflesh of the known world, hit the mud.

They charged forward ten, twenty paces. It was not as if they sank out of sight into the damp ground. They even kept going, after a fashion, these donts, creatures of the desert, who had never conceived of such a substance as mud, much less encountered it. They were brave, well-bred creatures. Their masters urged them forward, and so forward they struggled.

And that struggle served only to make room for more Blaskoye to reach the bottom of the outer levee slope and run into mud themselves.

Up and down the line, the same scene repeated itself over and over. Then, as if it were a thought that had never occurred before, but now struck and burned like wildfire, about half the Redlanders attempted to turn around, to retreat back up the outer levee wall. They yanked at the reins. Some dismounted and tried to physically pull, or push, their animals backwards.

They were cut off.

Now observe the outcome:

Even as the final stragglers of the horde charged the levee, another cloud of dust was forming to the west. There was a vanguard of a few donts with riders, but most of the dust was churned up by wagons rolling down the levee road. The wagons were stacked with a most curious cargo. Papyrus tubes, some of them four and five elbs long, lay in the wagon beds. Attached to each tube was a willow-wand shaft, each shaft about a thumb’s thickness and each cut to seven elbs in length.

From the rear of each tube, facing down the length of the shaft, depended a long fuse.

It was the women’s auxiliary, riding hell-for-leather down the wagon track on the top of the levee.

This was not a new maneuver, but one they’d been practicing over and over again for two days. They had practiced not here, but on wagon tracks close-in to Hestinga. This was even easier, for the wagon trail here was completely straight. Then the vanguard reached its agreed upon destination, and the line ceased to move. A signal went up from wagon to wagon.

Deploy rockets.

Each wagon was crewed by a team of ten. Six manned the artillery, four defended with muskets or, more commonly, bow and arrow.

And what artillery it was—new to the Land itself.

The lucifers had been supplied by the Scouts, the secret matches of Irisobrian, mother of Zentrum, patron of Scouts, who kept Zentrum alive with fresh milk from her otherwise dead body for fifty days and fifty nights. Now, using these fire sources, the wagon crews set up a simple A-frame on which to balance the rocket shafts.

The box canyon explosion, gone awry, had provided the idea.

Center and Raj had shown him how to improve the design once he’d seen the effect that could be achieved.

Golitsin had engineered the final product, adding a pitch-coated interior that the priest claimed was fire resistant.

Raj had warned him not to expect much actual damage. If the effect you are looking for is a direct hit on the enemy, this is an effect that is seldom achieved.

Rockets burn their fuel as they fly, said Center. This causes the weight to change in flight. And the guide shafts that are essential to a good launch begin to shimmy, and the entire contraption frequently flies randomly off course. The Congreve rocket was an instrument of terror far more than a weapon of destruction. It is possible to create a multiple-angled exhaust nozzle that will impart spin to correct this tendency, but this piece requires metallic forges, which we at present lack.

So we use them for terror and the occasional hit, Abel thought. I’m all right with that.

The women set the rockets for a low trajectory. Their targets were below them, but the parabolic path would require them to elevate somewhat to reach their targets. Finding range would be the hard part. Each group had at least five rockets.

The discipline was impressive. It was almost as if they moved according to Mahaut’s telepathic command. The fire began at one end of the line and moved down it to the end as each team lit their rockets and fired them into the hordes below.

Then, when the last rocket on the end was fired, the direction was reversed and the rocket next door fired, and so back up the line again to its end. Watching the fire travel was like watching an echo made visible, Abel thought.

As he’d known would be the case, the rockets didn’t kill many Blaskoye. Some were hit, and he saw at least one man’s head taken off by the two-pound charge that went off at the end of a rocket’s flight.

The disorder and confusion the rockets created was complete, however. Those that had turned their donts around to retreat were terrified back into the basin. All around them rockets streaked, creating horrible shrieks of tortured sound as they travelled through the air, so loud a man couldn’t hear himself speak.

Swooooosh!

Over and over again, until the black powder smoke hung in a cloud, and still more rockets poured into that cloud.

Swoosh!

Drowning the screams of donts and men.

And when the rockets reached their range and exploded, the sound resonated down the basin, rang from the levies, and obliterated all lesser noise in a moment that produced astonishment that something could be this loud, could physically hurt as much as a blow to the head.

So the Blaskoye could not face the women with their rain of fire. They struggled on and up toward the Canal levee. Through the muck, churning themselves deeper, making the way forward for their compatriots all the more difficult.

“When them walkers gome thinkah ye, Capun?” asked Kruso. “Donned them tha flats.”

“Sounds like we’re ready,” Abel answered. He turned to Anderson, his wigwag officer. “Send a signal in all directions, Lieutenant. Forward half speed. Attack.”

“Yes, sir.” While still on dontback, Anderson began waving his flags.

Abel glanced over to Kruso. “You ready?”

Kruso smiled his gap-toothed, ragged smile. “Aye, Capun,” he said. “Bet makem can tha.”

“Sure, what do you want to wager?”

“Thet four to yorn drei get mah.”

“I’ll take that,” Abel said. “I know exactly how this breechloader works, you know.”

“Aye, sir,” said Kruso. “But Ah hov practis.” He showed his right hand. Three paper cartridges were gripped between his fingers. So he’d learned Golitsin’s trick—or maybe been the one who taught it to the priest.

Abel joined the crooked but unbroken line that had formed along the top of the levee. Took a breath. Let it out.

He raised his hand, put it down. They began to trot down the levee’s slope into the basin, firing their rifles as they came.

He fired. Pulled back the dog, flipped up the trapdoor breech on its hinge, flicked the percussion cap, the only piece remaining in the barrel, out. Loaded another cartridge. Closed the trap. Pushed the cartridge forward. Clicked the gun to full cock. Another shot. Then another.

And again.

And with each bit of practice, he was only getting faster at loading.

The boards kept his feet from submerging in the paddy muck.

He took another step. Fired.

There was no reason to go quickly. The Redlanders were now truly not going anywhere. The Blaskoye leaders gave up the struggle to push their donts forward and dismounted. The others followed suit. Instead of attacking, they now hunkered down and used the donts for cover.

Clever, Abel thought. A bullet whizzed past him. He gauged where the shot had come from, aimed, shot. Reload. Shoot. Reload again.

To not have to worry about the endless task of feeding powder into the muzzle under fire was priceless. No stamping the ball in with the rod. No hundred eyeblink delay with a hail of lead about your head. Just this simple motion of reloading a papyrus cartridge. The flicking away of the cap and trace of burned residue.

Some of the guns were jamming. That was no good, but it was happening in spots up and down the line. He took a quick look and saw this. But it did not look to be a problem most were having.

It was not a problem he was having.

He took aim at a big Blaskoye who was only partially concealed behind his dont. He must stand up to reload. There was no choice with his musket.

The Redlander shoved in the cartridge and paper. He loaded the ball. Abel took aim. The Blaskoye lifted the ramrod. Abel fired.

The tall Blaskoye dropped the ramrod and clutched his side.

He fell over the dont, which must be dead, for it did not move. The rifle fell from his hands. He writhed in the mud in front of the dead dont, dying by kicks and spurts beside the dead beast that had borne him.

Abel turned his sights elsewhere.

Reload.

Fire.

The Scouts continued down the hill. And like rice at reaping time, the Blaskoye fell one after another, as if struck down by a scythe. There were only pockets here and there of Redlanders. Several had managed to get their donts in a circle and formed a dontflesh barricade of sorts. These diehard few would be tough to root out. More importantly, it would take time.

And there was the threat, still lingering in Abel’s mind, of a flank attack to the East. Should the remains of the Blaskoye who had taken the arsenal decide to take to the Canal levee—victory could become annihilation, at least for the breechload companies of the Scouts.

“Kruso, get your squad together and come with me. In fact, I’ll take all of Maday’s. Run get him, will you. Meet me on the levee.”

“Aye, Capun.” Kruso saluted with his right hand, its pinkie finger missing from some Redland scrape of Scout and nomad, now lost in time.

While Kruso went off to gather his men, Abel turned and made his way back up the hill, considering the gun. The Scout rate of fire was more than three times that of the Redlanders, especially in this situation. The Redlanders were terrified, trapped, probably running low on cartridges. Unable to comprehend what was happening to them.

A breechloader versus a musket was murder for the musketeer.

When he reached the levee top, he turned to see Maday’s troop, including Kruso’s squad, charging up after him. The donts were being handled by a group of younger Scouts serving as orderlies. All of them gripped rifles in one hand, a bouquet of dont reins in the others, and obviously wished desperately to take part in the action below.

Abel separated out the reins of his own dont—he was back on the big stag Spet—from the clump in the trembling keeper’s hand.

“You’ll get your chance,” Abel said to him. “Lots of them.”

The boy, no more than twelve, looked up and smiled, both terror and longing in his eyes.

Abel gave him a warm slap on the shoulder, then mounted his dont.

The others soon arrived, and they mounted up as well. Then they were charging down the levee to the east, charging past the priests who were leaning against their wheels and watching like spectators at a carnadon feeding, and leaving behind them the frequent, steady gunshot pops and the screams of dying Redlanders. To Abel’s ears, the screams sounded more like amazement and outrage than pain.